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Messina discusses future of Obama for America after election

Cutter: OFA can ‘affect’ elections

In its first days, Organizing for Action has closely affiliated itself with insider liberal organizations funded by mega-donors like George Soros and corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Citi and Duke Energy.

And it has quietly sought support from the same rich donors who backed Obama’s campaigns, asking for help from Democratic donors and bundlers in town for the Inauguration at a closed-door corporate-sponsored confab that featured Bill Clinton as the keynote speaker.

In fact, invitations for the Saturday meeting at the Newseum where Organizing for Action was unveiled for the liberal big-money set came from Obama’s National Finance Committee (one member of which gave a transferable ticket to POLITICO), as well as the Presidential Inaugural Committee, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters.

Dubbed the “Road Ahead” meeting, the conference was sponsored by a White House-allied trade association called Business Forward, which is funded by major corporations including Microsoft, Walmart and PG&E – each of which sent senior executives to participate in a panel on how to boost American economic competitiveness.

Jim Messina, Obama’s 2012 campaign manager and the Organizing for Action national chairman, and OfA Director Jon Carson, pleaded with invited big donors to support the new group. “We need you. This president needs you,” Messina said, adding Organizing for Action was “building a national advisory board filled with people in this room.”

Carson told the donors, who were treated to cocktails and light hors d’oeuvres after the day’s sessions, “there’s going to be a place for each and every one of you.”

Grassroots activists? They got their own pitch the next day at a bigger, no-invitation-necessary gathering called the “Obama Campaign Legacy Conference” held at the Washington Hilton. There, Carson told reporters that OfA would “absolutely” be funded mostly by grassroots donors like those Obama highlighted in his campaign, rather than big corporate donors.

An OfA spokeswoman declined to comment on the group’s presentation at the Newseum, its fundraising or relationship with other deep-pocketed liberal groups.